School Districts Optimistic About New Funding Formula

It's still relatively early in the life of California’s new school funding formula. But an early report out today suggests educators are excited about it.

The Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, is designed to give school districts more budget flexibility. It also gives more money to schools with concentrations of low income and non-English speaking students. Districts began using the plan this year.

Daniel Humphrey is with SRI International, a research company that studied the early implementation of LCFF as districts prepared for it this summer.

"There was a lot of enthusiasm about it," he says. "That doesn’t always happen in districts when the state does something."

But Humphrey says districts struggled to create accountability plans this summer. He says they had to act quickly and didn’t have much support from the state. And he says the districts have some concerns.

"They were concerned that the state would get impatient and want to make big changes to the LCFF," he says. "And they were asking for more time to get used to the new systems and to really refine their own practices." (:15)